These Five Soviet Super-Weapons Were Disastrous

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By Robert Farley, The National Interest




Sovetsky Soyuz class battleship:





The Orel and Ulyanovsk class aircraft carriers: 





Interwar Heavy Bomber

Although the Soviet Air Forces never developed a reputation for strategic bombing during World War II, in the interwar period the Soviets experimented heavily with long-range, four engine bombers.  Indeed, at the outbreak of war the Soviet Union fielded more of this type than any other country, although most of these were antiquated TB-3s.

By the time the war started, the Soviets had settled on the Pe-8, a bomber very roughly comparable to the Avro Lancaster and the Boeing B-17.  The Pe-8 never achieved the same level of success as those two aircraft, largely because of construction and supply problems.  However, during the process of development, the Soviet Air Forces had experimented with some truly grandiose projects, including the K-7 heavy bomber, which looked like a Junkers fever dream and crashed on its eighth test-flight, killing 14 aboard.

The most promising line of development revolved around the TB-3/ANT-20/TB-6 family, which were all monstrous aircraft of six engines or more.  The concept sacrificed speed and maneuverability for heavy armament, based on the theory that bombers flying in formation could defend themselves from pursuit aircraft.  The ANT-20 transport  had eight engines and could carry 72 passengers, at least before the prototype plowed into a Moscow neighborhood, killing 45 people.  The ANT-26, a potential bomber variant of the ANT-20, would have had twelve engines and a bomb load exceeding 33,000 pounds, considerably greater than a B-29. 

Only prototypes of these beasts ever got off the ground, and usually not for long.  Had the Soviet Union decided to go this direction, it likely would have severely retarded the development of Soviet tactical aviation, as well as draw resources away from the ground forces of the Red Army. Giant ANT-26s would likely have proven easy pickings for German interceptors, although at least they could have flown from bases beyond the range of the Luftwaffe.  Unlike the Western Allies, the Soviet Union didn’t have the luxury of wasting resources on an extended, expensive strategic bombing campaign; it needed to defeat the Wehrmacht on the field of battle.  Had the USSR chosen the strategic bombing route, it might have been unable to resist the German advance.

Tu-42 Super-heavy tank:


During the interwar period several countries contemplated the construction of “super-heavy” tanks, vehicles that would weigh three, or even four times as much as a standard battle tank. One German designer in particular, Edward Grotte, worked on super-heavy designs for both Germany and the Soviet Union. The most interesting of the several designs presented to the Soviet General Staff was the T-42, a 100 ton beast with three turrets, a speed of 17 MPH, and a crew of 14-15.

The T-42 never made it to prototype stage, but did earn some serious consideration in Soviet military circles.  Other, somewhat more realistic projects included the T-35, T-100, SMK, KV-4, and the KV-5.  Only the T-35, a 45-ton tank with 5 turrets, made it to production.  Nearly all of the 61 vehicles were lost in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, usually to mechanical defect and crew abandonment.

Like most of its super-heavy kin, the Tu-42 was too heavy, too costly, and too slow to put into serious production.  Had the Red Army determined to acquire the beast, however, it would likely have proven a disastrous liability in battles against Japan, Finland, and Germany, potentially distorting Soviet armored doctrine in addition to proving tactically useless.

Sukhoi T-4:

Many of the Soviet bombers of the post-war era were direct analogues to US types.  The Tu-4, in fact, was a direct copy of captured American B-29s. The Sukhoi T-4 was the USSR’s answer to the B-70 Valkyrie.  A massive, incredibly fast bomber capable of high altitude flight, the T-4 tested (and in many ways exceeded), the limits of the Soviet Union’s defense industry.

Designed to hit Mach 3, with a service ceiling of around 70,000’, the T-4 resembled the B-70 visually, and in capability.  However, because the organization of airpower in the Soviet Union differed from that of the United States, T-4s were also considered for tactical missions, such as reconnaissance and the delivery of anti-ship missiles.  The idea of a T-4 carrying Kh-22 anti-ship missiles is very scary indeed. 

However, the demands of the technology proved too great for the USSR to move to production.  The tolerances required for such high speeds and altitudes were probably beyond the capacity of the Soviet aviation industry to reliably produce.  Moreover, the T-4 suffered from many of the same intercept and SAM issues as the B-70. Much as the case with the B-70, the T-4 spawned its successor, the swing-wing Tu-160. Only 35 of the latter were built, arriving roughly a decade after the projected service date of T-4.

Had the USSR pursued the T-4, it would have had to give up on large portion of its tactical air fleet.  However, it would also have had a high-level, supersonic bomber designed (in part) to deliver anti-ship missiles.  This would have complicated the defense of US carrier groups even more than the arrival of the Tu-22M, a smaller, shorter ranged bomber.  Production of the T-4 might also have wrought changes in US procurement, with potentially greater focus on the B-1A, and on the strategic interceptor force.  Although extremely expensive to maintain, at least some of the T-4 force would likely have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union to serve in the Russian Air Force.


The Soviet military combined grandiose vision and global aspiration with a defense-industrial base that had severe limitations.  In some cases, these limitations produced remarkable weapons, such as the T-34 and the MiG-21.  In other cases, the limitations precluded disastrous decisions, such as the giant heavy bombers, the huge battleships, and the giant tanks of the interwar period. The true lesson, however, is that while decisions about weapon systems often reverberate across an entire defense-industrial base, they only rarely change the fates of nations.


This first appeared in 2014 and is being reposted due to reader interest.This piece was originally published by The National Interest